If you have an ACCENT how are you treated? (page 3)

under74

I don't get that one so I'm not gonna touch it

Since I grew up in Arkansas, I naturally developed the Southern accent. When people would hear my accent they would do two things: 1) Mentally deduct ten points from my I.Q. 2) Look at my feet to see if I was wearing shoes.

I went to college in the Midwest and took a class called Voice and Diction. This class removed a lot of my accent. After college I lived in the Southwest for seven years. Eventually, my Southern accent faded. When people would find out that I was originally from Arkansas, they would always say, "Well, you don't sound like you're from Arkansas." Of course, now that I have moved back, my friends from Texas tell me that I have a Southern accent again. I tell them that I'm still wearing shoes, too.

For what it's worth....
CountryGuy

JW83

Hey Chris, sorry to hear that your thesis was rejected. Academics can be sucks.

ChrisVance

JW83, thanks, I've been so bummed I have done anyting all day. I told my thesis director I'd make an appointment to talk to him about it as soon as I'm up to it.

Soledad

chris that sucks. I bet that if it were up to them, they couldn't properly translate a spanish document into english!

besides, Mexican spanish has its' own idiosyncrasies, enough so that they are misunderstood by other spanish speaking people. Now I bet that doesn't make them feel good at all!

true story. I was in Florida long time ago. I asked a hotel employee "I cant find the AWWWFFF switch for DA lights in my room. can you tell me WHAIR it is?" he scruched up his face and asked me "do yall really speak like that in NY?" I couldn't control my laughter. I swear, I really don't think I have an accent, but everyone else notices it before I can even speak!

Sunspot

I've always had an "ear" for regional accents, and can pick one up (and where its from) in a couple of sentences. Even when I was at an assembly or we had a visiting speaker from another area, I could pick up on the speech patterns and the dialect immediately!

When we moved here to upstate NY, I was surprised that we were often asked where we were from-----it's only about 400 miles from where I was born! But the New England accent definetely caught a few ears. I somehow had to work with the fact that (we were told) I sounded "hoity-toity" which was the farthest thing from the truth!

It used to crack people up when we said "aunt" instead of "ant", and called the living room the parlor. Being up here the better part of 25 years, when we go back to MA, if we say ""aunt" (ont) now we get the strange looks!

Funny thing though, I had cousins who were born and raised in Natick, and friends in Waltham, and I thought they had heavy accents when I was a kid. And like I said---this was in the same state!

I've often wondered why certain regions had different ways of speaking, and that things can really change from one rest stop or two on the highway---especially in Mass!

Annie

kaykay_mp

Raised in southwestern TN from birth - age 18, I have never, ever developed a southern accent, and was ostracized by both acquaintances and family over it (got tired of being called "White" when it was obvious that I wasn't). I don't know why I never picked up a southern accent. When I lived in Germany, I started developing a German accent. Now that I'm in El Paso, I'm starting to develop a Latino accent.

ay yi

kaykay_mp

fairchild

Well, due to lots of traveling and moving around, I speak several languages, but not one without an accent, not even my native tongues. No matter where I am, no matter which language I speak, I always have an accent. I can't tell you how sick I am of people pointing out my accent. My day job is at a store, and at least 10 times a day, a customer asks where I'm from. It is my experience that it is not the accent perse which makes people treat you differently, it is rather the fact that you're "a stranger" and not a local. And that will never change. Trust me, I know.

Robert K Stock

Last year I went to New Hampshire to look for a job. I raised a few eyebrows by saying,"y'all" and "howdy"

I find it very funny that Mexicans would be so concerned about accents. It is not as if they speak perfect Castillian Spanish.

I have heard that Argentines speak Spanish with an Italian accent.

AlanF

Accents are interesting and usually kind of fun. I have a bit of a New York accent, but it only comes out in a few words or phrases. And since there are probably at least 8-10 different New York area accents, it's hard to say which one anyone is talking about, since most people aren't aware of that.

I don't know enough Spanish to comment much about Spanish accents, but I've been told that among Spanish speakers generally, the Cuban accent is considered very nice. I can believe that, since my main Spanish teacher for 3 years of junior-high Spanish was a Cuban, and I thought her manner of speaking was nice. I suppose there are at least as many regional accents, and perhaps dialects, of Spanish as there are of English.

As my ear goes, some English accents are pleasing and some are grating. I find the hard Boston area accent extremely irritating (I lived in the area for 3 years), but again there are many very local regional variations on even that theme. For example, the name of the town spelled "Woburn" might be pronounced something like "WReubin" (the "WR" is sort of a hybrid between R and W, the "eu" is pronounced like a New Yorker would pronounce the name "Reuben", and the "burn" is translated to "bin") in some small areas, but more like the spelling would suggest to most English speakers in other areas.

My dad was from a small Oklahoma town, and when he went to Bethel in the late 1930s became acutely embarrassed by his "Okie" accent, so he worked to get rid of it. He largely succeeded, except for a few things like pronouncing "measure" like "mayzure". So the combination of his accent, with my mom's who was raised in the New York area, contributed to my somewhat unique accent. Of course, living in a wierd place like Oregon for many years probably changed things yet again, but it's hard to tell.

My daughter, raised in Oregon, has a largely neutral accent (judged by the way most national newscasters speak), but pronounces some words in a way that still sounds odd to my New-Yorkie ears. For example, she sees no difference in the way the words "marry" and "merry" are pronounced, but for me the pronunciation is completely different. In other U.S. areas, "marry", "merry" and "Mary" are all different, but for me, the latter two are the same.

I don't think that there's any "correct" accent for most languages, since different regions always have different accents and language is defined by how people really speak, not by how some authoritative body decides it should be spoken. Language is always evolving, and that's one of its beauties.

AlanF

If you have an ACCENT how are you treated?

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